The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

Tagra posted:

The last four days of event log are full of "The server was unable to allocate from the system nonpaged pool because the server reached the configured limit for nonpaged pool allocations." I don't actually know what that means, but I'm assuming it's somehow related. I am running TVersity as a media server for the Xbox, I don't know if that's the server it's referring to or not. RAM usage seemed normal though.

You most likely have a bad driver that's leaking nonpaged memory. You can read a little more about nonpaged vs. paged memory here: http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2009/03/26/3211216.aspx

# ¿ Jul 27, 2009 16:13

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:19

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

Tagra posted:

Is there a way in just the base Task Manager to see which process might be leaking, or do I have to go get the program talked about in that article?

You can add the "Paged Pool" and "Nonpaged pool" columns to the "Process" tab in Task manager, although I don't think you'll notice the leak by doing this.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2009 20:27

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

Psimitry posted:

So I'm forcing myself to work with the new taskbar without any form of quicklaunch or other quick access to shortcuts, and I feel like I'm getting used to it. I'm still not completely sold on the concept, as I REALLY don't like having all of my windows grouped. But I'm going to try it for a bit longer.

You can change the grouping from "Always combine, hide labels" to "Combine when taskbar is full" or "Never combine" on the Task bar and Start menu Properties dialog box.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2009 16:10

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

kevdude posted:

I'm getting constant disconnects of my internet access with the error "Default gateway is not available". This is happening every 5-10 minutes on average. I've googled the problem and it seems to be related to the fact my motherboard is nForce (680i) and Windows 7 doesn't like that.

Does anyone else have this problem? Most recent nVidia driver for my nForce series is from back in May, I really hope there's a new one out soon. I'm using the RTM 64-bit professional version, from the MSDN Academic site.

Do you have iTunes installed? If you do, this might apply: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970313

# ¿ Aug 28, 2009 21:50

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

bewbies posted:

Second, how can I install on my netbook with no CD drive?

Copy the contents of the setup DVD to a USB stick and make it bootable. See http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=345

# ¿ Oct 22, 2009 15:11

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

AlexDeGruven posted:

I have a WD Black (1TB) and it scores 5.9. It seems the best you can do, according to WEI, is 5.9 with a single spindle drive.

Try looking at the actual XML file in C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore. The disk scores will look something like this:

code:

<Metrics>
 <DiskMetrics>
  <AvgThroughput kind="Sequential Read" units="MB/s" ioSize="65536" score="5.8">65.49875</AvgThroughput> 
  <AvgThroughput kind="Random Read" units="MB/s" ioSize="16384" score="4.0">1.57000</AvgThroughput> 
  <Responsiveness Kind="AverageIORate" units="ms/IO" score="6.7" factor="0.0">2.50000</Responsiveness> 
  <Responsiveness Kind="GroupedIOs" units="units" score="6.2" factor="0.0">14.27419</Responsiveness> 
  <Responsiveness Kind="LongIOs" units="units" score="6.7" factor="0.0">16.77237</Responsiveness> 
  <Responsiveness Kind="Overall" units="units" score="6.2" factor="0.0">239.41199</Responsiveness> 
  <Responsiveness Kind="Cap" Reason="PASSED">FALSE</Responsiveness> 
 </DiskMetrics>
</Metrics>

This ends up being represented as 5.8 in the top level UI.

From the Engineering Windows 7 blog, it sounds like all of your scores need to by high to make it above 5.9

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx posted:

What Windows Experience Index changes were made to address SSD performance characteristics?

In Windows 7, there are new random read, random write and flush assessments. Better SSDs can score above 6.5 all the way to 7.9. To be included in that range, an SSD has to have outstanding random read rates and be resilient to flush and random write workloads.

In the Beta timeframe of Windows 7, there was a capping of scores at 1.9, 2.9 or the like if a disk (SSD or HDD) didn�t perform adequately when confronted with our random write and flush assessments. Feedback on this was pretty consistent, with most feeling the level of capping to be excessive. As a result, we now simply restrict SSDs with performance issues from joining the newly added 6.0+ and 7.0+ ranges. SSDs that are not solid performers across all assessments effectively get scored in a manner similar to what they would have been in Windows Vista, gaining no Win7 boost for great random read performance.

I found one user who's score was above 5.9 who posted his raw data, and that seems to match my hypothesis: http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?s=f737d0b46602db2d8d91456e76348743&p=6135230&postcount=14

edit:
You can also rerun the disk assessment specifically. From an administrative command prompt:

code:

C:\Windows\system32>winsat diskformal
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-seq -read -n 0'
> Run Time 00:00:14.52
> Running: Storage Assessment '-ran -read -n 0'
> Run Time 00:00:13.77
> Running: Storage Assessment '-scen 2009 -drive C:'
> Run Time 00:01:12.99
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read                   64.52 MB/s          5.8
> Disk  Random 16.0 Read                       1.21 MB/s          3.4
> Responsiveness: Average IO Rate              3.83 ms/IO          5.9
> Responsiveness: Grouped IOs                  11.99 units          6.8
> Responsiveness: Long IOs                     19.32 units          6.4
> Responsiveness: Overall                      231.56 units          6.3
> Responsiveness: PenaltyFactor                0.0
> Total Run Time 00:01:42.38

stedd fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Nov 6, 2009

# ¿ Nov 6, 2009 19:15

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

If you can post the actual <DiskMetrics> section from C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore instead of the top level number, that would be useful.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2009 02:44

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

Codiusprime posted:

I am having this exact problem with a completely different set of hardware. It seems to happen when I am doing something light like browsing the internet or streaming video to my ps3, I play games on it pretty regularly with no issues.

It is an HP laptop with the Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 at 2.13Ghz with an NVidia GeForce GT 130M and 4 gigs of ram. All of my drivers are up to date.

The event log should give some information on the errors that are occuring. CAn you post those details here?

# ¿ Nov 11, 2009 20:28

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

dhrusis posted:

Here's an example:
SSDP svchost stuff

SSDP seems to be a service to discover UPnP devices, and it's failing with an AV. If you're not using UPnP for anything, you can try disabling the service in Computer Management. The full service name seems to be "SSDP Discovery"

# ¿ Nov 12, 2009 03:08

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

darnzen posted:

Actually I was expecting it to work like Linux. You know, where if you try to do anything requiring admin privs from a user account, it would ask for credentials. I didn't expect it to revert to the XP behavior that was so broken no one used it.

UAC is what provides this functionality now.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2009 17:16

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

madlobster posted:

One of the things I disliked about UAC in Vista Home Premium is that there was no way at the unelevated command prompt to do the equivalent of Linux's sudo command. I now have Windows 7 Ultimate, and have figured out that you can use su from the Subsystem for Unix-Based Applications to run a Win32-based application elevated. Only problem is, MS-DOS applications don't work with it. I get

I copied c:\windows\sua\bin\su to su.exe and executed
code:
su Administrator -c /dev/fs/C/Windows/System32/cmd.exe
to elevate a command prompt, then that error occurs with any MS-DOS program.

I guess with 64-bit windows dropping support for 16-bit applications, this isn't too important, but I'm still on 32-bit.

What does su do that runas doesn't do for you?

# ¿ Nov 16, 2009 15:26

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

XK posted:

There's no way I'm reading through over 200 pages, so has there been any discussion of Windows Search indexing interfering with hard drive access speeds?

Using Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, my disc burning software would constantly deplete the buffer and halt burning to wait for the drive, and uTorrent would regularly report "disk overload 100%", which would also halt that for, sometimes, over a minute at a time before it would continue again. I turned off indexing on all my drives, and disabled the search service. Now everything is perfect.

The IO priority on the indexing service is "Background", so it shouldn't interfere with normal activities on your system at all, unless uTorrent or or disk burning software is also using "Background" IO. Resource Monitor is useful for determining what's using up your disk.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2010 07:06

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

XK posted:

Maybe indexing chokes when presented with 7.5 TB? It was constantly and endlessly reading my drives, even opening folders would grind for a second or two. Now they barely make a peep, and all I did was kill indexing.

By default, it doesn't index everything on all of your drives, just the Start Menu and your Users folder. You can adjust this in the Indexing Options control panel.

Do you have Outlook installed by any chance?

# ¿ Jan 26, 2010 16:29

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

Interlude posted:

Running an 8800GT graphics card - stick with the Win7 default drivers or install the ones from Nvidia's site?

Windows Update only offers WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Lab) certified drivers. There's also some lag time between a driver getting WHQL'ed and making it on to WU. I'd suggest grabbing the latest WHQL certified driver from the NVIDIA website. It'll say WHQL in small print next to the version number.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2010 09:14

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

LooseChanj posted:

I hear that, I bought 8 gigs when I built this machine and I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the times it's used over 4.

I can guaranteethat nearly all 8GB is getting "used", either by file system cache or prefetcher. You are seeing a benefit from the extra RAM even if the applications you're running aren't directly using it.

You can verify this by looking at the Memory tab in Resource Monitor and looking at the bar that represents your memory usage. Standby RAM is available to programs, but is storing useful data like the file system cache.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2010 07:04

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

peak debt posted:

How are you supposed to manually add routes to Windows 7?

In this specific case I have a VPN open to another class c network and I want to make sure that I can connect to the remote IPs.
The default route on this computer is
code:
0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0   192.168.115.10  192.168.115.166     20
routing all traffic that doesn't go to the same subnet to the Internet

Now I want to add the specific route to my VPN and use the old Windows XP commandline
code:
route add 172.23.200.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.8.0.1 metric 15
to create a higher priority rule for just this specific subnet to go out through the VPN

But a route print reveals that this
code:
172.23.200.0    255.255.255.0         10.8.0.1         10.8.0.6     45
So Windows 7 has "helpfully" added my desired metric to the automatically determined metric of the network interface instead of taking it as an absolute value. Of course, any ping to a 172 subnet address still takes the default route out to the Internet. In Windows XP this worked exactly the other way around and the new route would have the total metric of 15.

Now I've already cleverly tried this
code:
route add 172.23.200.0 mask 255.255.255.0 10.8.0.1 metric -15
but that's just downright rejected as a parameter.

Have you tried using route change to change the metric on the default route to something higher?

# ¿ Feb 24, 2010 18:22

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:19

stedd: Jun 20, 2004; The name's Bullet. Tracer Bullet.

Thermopyle posted:

Something is keeping my screensaver from activating or my monitor from going to sleep.

Any good ways to figure out what?

powercfg -energy from an administrative command prompt. It'll run for a minute or so, and generate a report that should give you details on what's keeping your system out of lower power mode.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2010 05:07

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